39. How to Create Confidence using the 4Cs

Thu, 2/24 6:30AM • 10:49 By Vanessa Calderon

Welcome to coaching for Latina leaders, the only podcast dedicated to the advancement of Latinas at every level of life with your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon a Latina with over 20 years of leadership experience, Harvard grad physician and mother of two.  

Hi, cuties. We're talking about the four C's to build confidence. Now, this is a framework I learned a few years ago by one of my teachers, Dan Sullivan, that I want to share with all of you. Before I do, though, I just want to give a shout out to anyone that currently works at the Kaweah  Delta Hospital in Visalia, my mom was a patient there in the ER last night, and the docs and the nurses, they're all did an incredible job taking care of her. So huge shout out if you are on staff there. Or if you are one of the ER Doc's, my heart goes out to all of you. Thank you so much. 

Okay, so let's talk about the four C's. So again, this is a concept that I learned a few years back, and it's been coming up a lot for me recently, as I've been growing my own business and putting myself in these new spaces of personal and professional growth. So I'm going to start by first sharing the difference between self confidence and confidence because the four C's are to build confidence. So Self confidence is you being able to be secure in your own abilities. Okay, so self confidence means, for example, if you know you're someone that never quits, if you know, you're someone that can work really hard, if you know you're that person, that's you're confident  that's who you are, that you being secure in your abilities. Confidence, on the other hand, is more external, it's you drawing on evidence that you've been able to do some things. So for example, I'm pretty confident that I can intubate almost anybody that walks into the emergency department, because I've done that a lot, I've grown that skill, I'm confident. And that has also now projected into me being self confident. So I show up in that space. And I carry myself, it's pretty confident when I'm running code, for example, because I know I can run a code, I feel pretty secure, I'm calm and patient, my ways of being are one of having a lot of self confidence when I'm running codes. And I'm confident in the skill that I can intubate. Okay, so I'm going to share the four C's with you. And then I'm going to go through each one of these. And as I'm explaining them, I want for you to think of examples of when this was relevant for you. Okay, so the four C's are commitment, courage, capability, and confidence. 

So let's talk about each one of these. You know, the thing about the four C's, and what I find really interesting is when you start seeing any like skilled athlete, for example, a pro athlete on TV, or anyone else that's really skilled, w hat  is you see them at the fourth C , you see them at confident, they've already excelled, they've already gone through the first three, and they're at number four. And that's what we see out there. And our brain does not do a very good job of processing that that's not how they always work. And human beings tend to be very individually centric. So when things are really hard for us, we think it's only us and no one else. And we don't realize that everyone has to go through the four C's to build a skill, everyone has to do it. Okay, so let's go through each one of these. Now, the first C, again, is commit.  

commitment is the most important thing. You've probably heard me talk a lot about commitment if you've been listening to this podcast, because without it, it's really hard to propel yourself forward. A lot of people think you need motivation or inspiration to achieve goals. But ultimately, what it comes down to is commitment because there's going to be days where your motivation isn't there, your inspiration isn't there, you're really exhausted. But if you have commitment, that is what will carry you through. So number one you commit. So let's say you have another goal coming up. For me, I'll tell you when this was an example for me is when I was applying to medical school many years ago, I first had to commit that that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go to med school. So I committed to applying to med school. Okay. 

And then you go on to the second one's the second C is courage. So a lot of people quit, after commitment when they're trying when you go from commitment to the next step. Now courage doesn't feel good. And that's why people quit because courage is a really positive sounding word. But the act of courage feels really uncomfortable, because courage is you taking a lot of aligned action towards your goal. And that action taking is really uncomfortable when you're uncertain about the outcome. Okay, so when you start taking action, and you don't know what the outcome is going to be yet, it gets really uncomfortable because a bunch of your thoughts will start coming up. Is this worth it? Is it gonna work? Am I good enough? What if I fail? What's the point of all of this? Okay, so courage, again, is not the absence of fear. Because if you didn't have fear, you wouldn't need courage. It would just be an action you would just go and be taken action. So courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is you taking aligned action in the face of fear or uncertainty towards a committed goal. Okay, so the second C is courage. And that's the most important thing and one of the most uncomfortable things. And right now, as I'm working through and expanding myself my own self concept, I've been sitting through courage, and the third C, which is capability. And as I was, as I'm sitting through courage, it feels really uncomfortable. There's times where I really just kind of want to like vomit a little bit, it feels so uncomfortable. So if that's you, and you're sitting through the courage, just know, on the other side is capability, and then it becomes so much easier.

 Okay, so the third C is capability. So once you start taking a bunch of aligned action, and you have the courage to take the action, then you start building the capability and you realize, oh, I can actually do this. So let me give you another example, when I was, or let me stick with the med school example, since I started with that. So I committed to going to medical school, but I was really nervous. What if I didn't get in? What if I wasn't good enough? What if I wasn't smart enough. And then I decided to apply. So I had the courage to apply. And I just cast a wide net, and I applied to a bunch of medical schools hoping that I would get in. And I did everything I could to try to mitigate me failing from not going to med school. So I did a bunch of stuff I did took a lot of action. And I remember there was one day when I was sitting in my car, and I called my older sister who might one of my BFFs. And I would also want to be biggest cheerleaders. And I was crying on the phone and saying, What if I don't get in? And she was like, Whoa, take a step back here. Why are you even going there? And that's what a lot of us do when we're in that second. See, when we're encouraged, we start questioning what if this is important, okay. So then capability came up for me, because then I started getting interviews. So the med schools for when you go to medical school, part of the processes you go and you interview on campus. So I started getting invited to interview on the campus. So then I started feeling a little bit capable, okay, maybe people do like me. So maybe I am I good enough, maybe I can get into medical school. So that's when you start building that third C capability. So capabilities when you start realizing that things are actually working. And it's you are building that skill now. So I started going to medical school, I started feeling capable. And then the medical school acceptance letters started coming in. So as they started getting accepted, that's when the fourth C came in. That's when confidence came in. And confidence and capability is kind of like a feedback loop. Once you start feeling confident, you don't have to go all the way back to commitment and courage to take another action towards that same poll. Because once you start feeling a little confident, what ends up happening is your brain now has evidence that it's possible. And when your brain has evidence that it's possible, you shift your thoughts, you shift your mental model from one of uncertainty to certainty. And once you're sitting in certainty, you no longer need courage to propel you forward, you feel certain that it can be done. And so confidence and capability feeds on itself. And so then you become more and more capable. So once I got my first acceptance letter, I was like, Oh, look at this, I'm going to be a doctor. Then I started getting more interviews. And I was like, Let's go for it. And it built more confidence. So I would show up stronger and more confident to those other interviews. And that's how that works. That's how those four C's work. 

Again, you need commitment. So once you start committing, you have to actually not quit commitment is the most important thing. Once you make that decision in your mind, you know, there's no going back, you're all in on your goal. That's commitment that drives you to the second C which is courage. Now, courage is the most uncomfortable thing. If you're looking at this on a graph. Courage is that first upward slope, that's it's the one thing you need to overcome, you need to feel that discomfort. You need to do the work anyway. And it's you do it in the face of fear. That's what courage is courage is taking aligned action towards your goal in the face of fear. Okay, so you have commitment, then you do the second C which is courage, which is really uncomfortable for me it feels like like this kind of nine feeling in the pit of my stomach. So what is courage feel like for you really ask yourself and once you recognize that it's there, once it's there for me, I acknowledge okay, this is must be what courage feels like it feels really uncomfortable. And I know that this is the part where I start feeling really a lot of self doubt and really insecure. And I know that this is the hump I need to get over to get to that next part which is building capability. Then you start building capability and you slowly start getting evidence that it's possible. And that's where confidence comes from. 

Confidence comes from you going through those steps, getting evidence that it's possible, and then you become confident and again confidence and capability feeds on itself. And the more you go through these forces and the more you expand yourself and the more you really feel what it feels like to commit to feel courage, what that feels like in your body, the easier it is for you to get over Are those humps when it gets hard and know that the next part of this is the confidence, that's where that comes from. Okay, I hope you found this helpful. I want you to again, think about an example when you had to go through this for yourself as you were expanding and growing into sort of the next version of yourself or that next skill you wanted to build. And I'll see you next week.

 Adios. Hey mujeres! If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate review and share it with a friend. And if you love what you're learning here, then you have to sign up for my weekly love letters. I send you all the good stuff, doses of inspiration and all the skills you need. So you can live, lead and make money like the chingola that you are, subscribe on my website at VanessaCalderonmd.com I'll see you there.